Re: [BackupPC-users] first "full" never completes

[Timothy J M. <tm...@ob...>]

This is my last reply to this thread.  Explained below:

ha...@gm... wrote on 09/04/2011 01:41:57 AM:

> (I didn't realize BPC 
> permissions could vary from one distro to another).

<Snip>

> Re OS choices, I don't have the access, knowledge or desire to do my
> initial learning/experimentation in the production CentOS CLI 
> environment; for many aspects it's so much easier to work with 
> a distro like Ubuntu at this stage. Once I'm confident I've got the 
> BPC side of things working just right, the CentOS guy can set up the
> production server however he likes.

So, you understand that each distribution is going to set things up 
differently, which is very likely to contribute to future problems, yet 
you decide to voluntarily deal with such problems.  All of this after 
stating that you do not have sufficient skills to even know when you 
*might* be running into problems.

My time is too valuable to put band-aids on people who after being told 
not to run with scissors (and acknowledge the stupidity of running with 
scissors), insist on doing it (again).

> My ultimate goal is to have a self-contained BackupPC HDD - conf and
> log physically under TOPDIR - which in the event of a disaster can 
> be mounted to a new host running an arbitrary distro, possibly 
> needing to be created by a staffer even more ignorant of Linux than 
> myself supported by a step-by-step howto. Ideally I'd like to figure
> out how to create a customized BackupPC LiveCD that could be stored 
> with the drive(s) offsite. 

But seeing as I'm already replying to this one, I will add one more thing 
(and not politely, because I'm annoyed):

Your solution demonstrates what is to me a pretty fundamental 
misunderstanding of the role of a backup server.

You want to dangle a hard drive onto a production server, put BackupPC on 
that server and consider that a backup?  This is wrong on *SO* many 
levels.  It's the wrong configuration, it's the wrong tool and it's 
serving a purpose that makes almost no sense.

Why would you create a solution such  that when one system fails, you risk 
losing both the production data AND THE BACKUP DATA all at the same time. 
Imagine a power supply failure.  Couldn't it take out both hard drives? 
Sure can.  How about a malicious user that runs "rm -rf /".  Gonna wipe 
out the backup data too.  I can come up with a DOZEN scenarios with zero 
effort.

If a 35% solution works for you, great.  But most people would usually 
prefer a more useful one.

> These goals also support my doing the learning/configuration work on
> an alternative distro.

Ah, but your backwards of accomplishing this does not encourage at least 
me to help you in the least.  *You* may want to learn all those 
differences, but I sure do not want to waste my time teaching them to you. 
 Why should I?  This is not a "new-linux-traning" list. It's the BackupPC 
list.  Yet you, in your ignorance, *will* make the rest of us teach you 
just because you cannot identify the difference between a new-linux-user 
mistake and a new-BackupPC-user mistake.  That happens every day around 
here.  BUT YOU ARE INTENTIONALLY MAKING THE PROBLEM WORSE, even AFTER we 
have told you NOT TO!

So you are on your own.  After all, you have the source.  Feel free to use 
it.

> But for now, I am starting from scratch with 3.1 on Lucid, working 
> step by step in departing from the defaults, testing and keeping 
> careful notes in case I need to come back here with further issues, 
> so as not to waste you guys' time further.

Too late.

Timothy J. Massey

 
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